Edward Bawden is often thought of as a designer rather than an artist primarily because of the sheer volume of commercial work that he produced and the popularity of that work with the public and commissioning companies alike. But how did Bawden see his own work? What interested him and what did he bring to those works made for non-commercial reasons? I will examine the works he made away from the marketing of products and hope to show a neglected aspect of Bawden’s oeuvre.

The designer label naturally originates education at the Design school of the Royal College of Art. At that time it was easier to apply for a scholarship for ‘industrial design’ than the more popular fine art, and probably suited the young Bawden and his Cambridge art school education better. At this time this meant calligraphy, or more specifically ‘Writing and Illumination’. This route importantly leads him into contact with three artists that would be of such influence to his art and life, Eric Ravilious, Paul Nash, and Douglas Percy Bliss.

Henri Matisse Arabesque, 1924.

Branson and the Nude, c.1927.

When Bawden joined the Design School, he had entered a school very much considered the lesser partner to the RCA’s painting school - not least of all by the college principle William Rothenstein. The college had been established to improve the quality of industrial design, but it was the belief, it seems, that the solution to this problem was to produce painters heavily trained in figure drawing, rather than the ‘designers’ who hadn’t required a drawing examination to get in. Sub-standard painting applicants who didn’t pass Rothenstein’s drawing exam were ‘kicked into the design school’. Writing in his book Edward Bawden, Bliss wondered if Bawden and Ravilious had not got the better deal as the ‘Elect’ (as they considered themselves) in the painting school had a pretty solid diet of figure drawing and painting while over in design they had the freedom to do pretty much what they liked. Bliss wrote that Bawden reluctantly acknowledged that his drawing was seen as poor by RCA standards, but always

resented this. He noted the primitive nature of Bawden’s figures, which he refers to as ‘Anglo Saxon’ in nature, and may well owe more to the brass rubbings Bawden made at school than the traditional life class he ‘frequently dodged’ at the RCA, where he left it to painters like his friend Bliss to deal with days on end shading breasts and thighs, and searching for solidity. Examples of his brass rubbings can be seen in the watercolour of his School room.

But Bliss doesn’t deny that these flat figures worked for Bawden. They did what he required of them and no more, often vehicles for his humour or fitting in the place of a decorative scheme rather than realistically rendering light and shade or even accurate form of the human figure. It is important to remember that a drawing should have a purpose. It can’t achieve

everything at once and Bawden knew well what he could and couldn’t do, and as by the end of his time at the RCA he was

increasingly busy with graphic design commissions, his clients were also very aware of what he was good at and in those on the

Detail from Branson and the Nude c.1927.

book at the Curwen Press he was the most frequently used of all their artists. Bliss summed-up his friends range at the time by saying that ‘Line was his weapon… not solid form, not tone, not atmosphere.’

An example of Bawden really making the most of his abilities with line is the engraving Branson and the Nude. Bawden first came into contact with engraving at a regular evening class at the Cass institute. The Branson was George Branson was a fellow student at the RCA and here stands at his easel, possibly in his own digs, painting a nude. The life model in the study is very revealing about where Bawden’s artistic interests lay at the time. The figure reclines on a patterned chair that at first evokes a Matisse composition, but unlike a Matisse such as Arabesque. Matisse balances the decorative effects of fabric with the lines of the figure and is interested in both. In Bawden’s work the figure is almost completely dominated by the pattern to the point that the lines of the legs and waist are worked to fit in with and reciprocate the floral motif than with accurate human anatomy: in fact the lower leg seems quite dislocated from the rest of the body. The chair is almost a cardboard cut out such is its flattening. The shadows are interestingly dealt

Detail from Branson and the Nude c.1927.

Brighton Snowstorm, 1956

with in the use of a broad band of repeated marks that contrast with the clearly delineated features on the other side. The face is no more than fudged and shows a lack of interest in features not ripe for a satirical or witty treatment. It seems that rather than Matisse’s enjoyment of depicting the female form against fabrics, as he did over and over again, Bawden shares some of Cezanne’s discomfort in drawing the nude from life. This is surely the only area in which Bawden allowed the shyness of his youth to impinge on his artistic output.

The face of Branson is much more confidently dealt with: Bawden has his protagonist unconsciously sticking his tongue out like a child deep in uninhibited concentration. In the background Bawden is on much happier ground as he takes obvious pleasure in filling every available space with little details and beautifully executed decorative motifs, such as the figures of eight in the frieze above Branson or the fire place by the model.

Liverpool St. Station , 1960

Here Bawden is in control and the way he has laid out the composition cleverly puts the viewers focus where he wants it. Later on in his career Graham Sutherland referred to Bawden’s line engraving as ‘the epitome – the very heart and flesh of engraving. The lines are resonant and astringent. Its technical origins may be found, perhaps, among the early masters of art’. Indeed, even in those early years everything he did had line at the very heart of it.

A master engraver then, but the printing medium that Bawden is most famous for is lino cutting. By the mid ‘50s Bawden had been working with lino for 30 years, mostly for

commercial commissions, and was an incredibly experienced exponent of the medium. Pieces like Brighton Snowstorm (1956) and Liverpool Street Station (1960) are incredible technical achievements and highly innovative in terms of the way that lino can create textures, patterns and tones. The semi-translucent cream-coloured ink partially obliterates the carefully depicted features of the pier and is strongly contrasted by the clarity of the areas not covered, such as the life boat and figures. The length of the pier takes your eye into the heart of the snow storm and then along a montage of Brighton motifs: a café, promenade, and, the onion domes that reference the pavilion.

Tower of London, 1966

Westminster Abbey, 1966

The epic and gothic Liverpool Street Station is not only an excellent example of his treatment of the lacelike ironwork that would later feature so strongly in his series of markets, but also is surprising for his

use of ‘washes’ of colour. Bawden was highly creative in the inking stage and the dusty pink in the background and the fading out of the details of the wing of the station under the arch are not just lino cutting effects but are created by careful use of the roller and very particular translucencies of ink – in effect Bawden is printing painted marks more like a one-off monotype. These layering effects and inventive processes are less the province of block-printmaking (especially when you consider the variation between impressions) and seem to me to relate to the painting world. Bawden’s son Richard has described the process used on

The Tower of London (1966): ‘Here my father is using the width of the roller like a paintbrush in the sky area’. Such a painterly approach and the dark

John Nash, Berkshire Landscape, date unknown.

gothic mood of the mid-sixties work evokes the work of an artist that both worked with The Curwen Studios as Bawden did and was also born in the same year as Bawden: John Piper. His Little Cressingham was made in the early 1980s but is typical Piper – dramatic, full of contrast, and use a mixture of wax, ink and watercolour to create light and texture. The Nine London Monuments and images like Lindsell Church evoke Piper, not least because of the handling of the architecture but also for their tone and atmosphere - those characteristics Bliss accused the early drawings of lacking. By scratching on the lino on a piece like Westminster Abbey(1966) Bawden creates an effect similar to the wash and wax resist of Piper or scratching through the paint layers like a Turner or Ravilious.

In his actual painting Bawden started far less assured, with small studies in wash and green ink. It was the watercolours of Paul Nash and his brother John that showed Bawden how one

might go about making larger pictures in watercolour. John Nash’s Berkshire Landscape(date unknown) in the Cecil Higgins collection is a classic example of the style and subject matter that inspired Bawden and his close friend and painting companion Ravilious. When working on pictures for a group show with Ravilious and Bliss in the late ‘20s he struggled with the transition to these larger works but was resolute in the direction he needed to go. Ravilious was concerned to see his friend having difficulty with his pictures but Bawden affirmed that ‘there was no turning back possible’ and he claimed it was easier painting large. While Ravilious could be said to exceed in technique the example of his tutor, as can be seen in the striking image of from his Sussex Downs series, Bawden’s watercolours by 1935 still retained a flatness and lack of depth, as can be seen in that year’s 8.30 Sunday Newhaven.

From the 1930s onwards Bawden’s prime concern became his watercolour painting, even holding a successful solo show at the Zwemmer Gallery in 1933, but it

wasn’t until World War II that his technique really improved. The challenge of working as a war artist did Bawden’s painting the world of good. As well as the sustained focus on

watercolours he needed to develop and mature with that medium, it kept him away from the demands of commercial work, and gave him a broad range of subject matter and technical challenges that he thrived on. His progress is quickly stunning, especially in his portraiture. He uses a limited colour range in his study of An Iraqi Jew(1943) to powerful effect. The modelling of the face with subtle layers of wash is solid, realistic and far beyond the young student who avoided life classes nearly 20 years earlier. His study of Sheik Hammuda al-Muzai’il has all the richness and tonal range that a picture like Newhaven lacked. You can almost sense the heat outside and he never succumbs to shattering the illusion with the decorative flourishes that came so easily to him. His lines create texture. While the Sheik’s face is sculptural and solid, the child’s face has a curious expression that is pure Bawden. He hadn’t completey shaken off the Nash influence, and when he came across this scene of war damaged trees in Gallabat: Guns Firing on Metemma   1940 his mind must have been taken straight back to one of the most powerful images of the First World War,

All throughout his career the watercolours were the backbone of his output, regularly taking painting trips to Ireland or elsewhere. In these landscapes he saw patterns everywhere and developed a style that blended his new abilities with depth to his eye for decoration in pictures such as Carsaig, 1950. In 1957 he inducted into the Royal Academy and provides them with a moody picture of Lindsell Church as his diploma piece.

Sheik Hammuda al-Muzai’il, c.1943, collection unknown

Audley End Park II, 1974, Private Collection

His blending of decoration and effects of light and space ar most notable in his pictures of

woods such as Audley End Park III, 1974, each leaf is carefully outlined in colour but in clever way tha doesn’t flatten out the overall composition.

In the later years his watercolours depict the things around him: his house, his cats, his garden. He takes liberties with

appearances: ‘ I generally paint in front of the motif even if it is not as I see it… I don’t wish perspective to be my master’ tipping up floors, cat baskets etc at will to satisfy the composition. … the abstract design underpins every image.’

On seeing his exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in 1983, Bawden said:

‘It is interesting to me as a reminder of places that I was thrilled to visit – such is one’s romantic nature - and now as an old

wodger interesting because I can trace a development in the work from stiff simple drawings to late ones that are rather more dashing, more accomplished, the medium used more flexibly and fearlessly’

When asked in 1982 if he had gradually stopped being a designer and become an artist, he replied

But there’s no difference between one and other. All my life I’ve been intermittently been doing watercolour drawings, and I’ve been interested in line engravings, lithographs and linocuts. I turned my interest to any direction.

Art and design are very much two sides of the same thing, but at the same time a piece of design has a particular purpose: message to get across or adds a memorable or enjoyable element to a product or message. Bawden’s art is not merely design work with no product or commercial message. At his best he makes the eye dart between witty details, abstract decorative patterns and often startling effects of colour layering. Bawden’s design work taught him many technical things, but he applied them as an artist.

All images copyright of the Trustees of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, unless stated. Text: Kristian Purcell, 2009.